It has been a rocky start for the reigning Tri-County Conference champion Wolves this season, as they begun conference play with two home losses — including 13 errors in those games combined.

But on Tuesday Woodland (3-9, 1-2) was able to change that, securing that elusive first TCC win on the road by a score of 8-1 over Inderkum (5-5-1, 1-3). Almost as important as getting the first win under their belt, the Wolves finished with zero errors.

Woodland’s head coach Felix Castillo said the Tigers did a nice job putting the ball in play, but his team showed up on defense, making the routine plays that gave them trouble in the previous two contests.

“Yeah, we made some great plays in the outfield. Linney made some tough catches with the wind today, they sliced on him and could have gone either way,” he said. “Everybody made the plays they needed to make.”

This was big for a struggling Woodland team, who seemed to be in a slump defensively. One thing they haven’t struggled with as much was batting, and that continued in the win over the Tigers, as the Wolves recorded over 10 hits.

While the score was 1-1 after two innings, Woodland simply took off from there, adding two runs in the third. The Wolves added another five runs in the final three innings, eliminating Inderkum’s hopes of making a late rally.

Sophomore CJ Ponce finished 2-3, and scored three runs for the Wolves. Nolan Dahler also went 2-3, including an RBI and a double. Three other Wolves finished 2-4 — Justin Borchard, Andrew Kindelt, and Truman Linney — they combined for two RBI’s.

Castillo said it was nice to get the first conference win, and put the overwhelming amount of errors in previous games behind them.

“It was good, the kids were fired up. Penrose came in and gave us a big boost. He came in for three innings and pretty much shut them down, he only gave up one hit, he did a great job,” he said. “He kept us where we needed to be and we added some more runs for him. We put up five runs in the final three innings, so that helped a lot.”

Junior right handed pitcher Ian Penrose relieved starter John Treat in the fifth inning. Treat finished with three strikeouts through four innings. Penrose came in and finished with five strikeouts in the final three, two of them coming on the final outs of the seventh inning — it was only his second appearance on the mound this year.

Woodland is focusing on one game at a time according to Castillo, who said he knows any team can beat any other team in the competitive TCC.

“You can’t take a day off, you cost yourself a chance at making the playoffs,” he said. “Championships are great, we had a good run last year but that’s in the past. For us, starting 0-2, we need to get wins to get back where we need to be. We just need to take it one game at a time.”

The Wolves play again Thursday, this time at home against Rio Linda at 4:15 p.m. with hopes of getting to .500 in conference play.